Unthinkable (Moment of Honesty)
by Regency
Summary: It isn't until the very moment Katie sees Ridge in his tux that she knows she's made a terrible mistake. (AU for 02.20.2014).


Author: Regency

Title: Unthinkable (Moment of Honesty)

Pairing: (New) Ridge/Katie

Summary: It isn't until the very moment Katie sees Ridge in his tux that she knows she's made a terrible mistake. (AU for 02.20.2014).

Author's Notes: Features Ridge as recently portrayed by Thorsten Kaye, not the version originated by Ronn Moss.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from _The Bold & the Beautiful._ They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun. Title borrowed from the Alicia Keys song, "Unthinkable (I'm Ready)."

~!~

Katie has butterflies in her stomach like she's the one getting married today. The Forrester mansion is at high polish and everyone is beautifully dressed. The excitement is as palpable on this day as it was during Ridge & Brooke's first wedding so very many years ago. She'd been a girl in her sister's shadow on that day. She was a woman no less obscured by Brooke's light twenty years hence. Katie had believed she couldn't feel worse than when she had finally discovered Brooke and Bill's affair. Today she learned that it was possible to have an already broken heart decimated.

Katie feels exposed in this garnet gown, her surgical scar oddly on display on a day where she'd prefer to keep the vulnerable parts of herself covered from prying eyes. She feels naked in a forest of thorny rosebushes and the only person who understands is the one who shouldn't.

Ridge steps out onto the portico to speak to her privately. The preparations go on inside, but out here it's just the two of them. Katie knows better to let her heart speed ahead of her and yet…

He cocks his head to give her a thorough once-over. "You don't look so good, you all right?"

"That's exactly what a girl likes to hear when she's gone to all the trouble of getting dressed up." Katie slides a hand down her dress in search of wrinkles and finding none.

Ridge stops her hand with his and she's too foolish to let go of it. "Don't get me wrong, you look stunning—you always do, but you don't look well." He presses the backs of his fingers against Katie's cheek, her brow. "You're clammy. How do you feel?"

Katie can't begin to list the alarms going off in her body about what feels wrong and what she should do to make it right. Katie wants to have stayed home today and slept. She wishes she was sleeping now, and dreaming.

"Katie, talk to me, sweetheart." Ridge cradles her face, rubbing soothing circles across the apples in her cheeks. "This doesn't feel right. I'm taking you to the hospital."

Katie reluctantly relinquishes the contact to argue. "You can't. You're getting married."

"Not today, I'm not. Probably not for a while. I think I've had my fill of weddings."

"You promised Brooke."

"I did, and I'll live with that dark mark on my record. I'll take the hit. But I won't watch you suffer trying to do the right thing. I care about you too much to watch you hurt for nothing."

"It's not nothing to RJ." She has thought of nothing but her nephew's fate. He's the only thing keeping her steady on the path. She has to remember what he needs.

"I hate to break it to you, but RJ's never known a happy home. His entire life long has been spent in one school or another being cared for by other people or living with me. He's had years to adjust to the idea of his mom and me living separate lives. He'll learn again."

Katie knows that the right thing to do would be to fight for her sister. She knows that she's spent weeks now fighting this creeping emotion that steals over her when Ridge is close to her. She's heard of feelings like this. They're sudden and new and strange and that's part of it; the strangeness, the fear. If she 'gives' Ridge back she never has to contend with the idea that Bill wasn't her destiny after all, he wasn't her soul mate. Surrendering to the feeling that makes her sway towards him as her heart shudders in her chest would mean betraying Brooke—who has betrayed her—and being no better. She knows all that and has fought all that and she's so damned tired she could weep. Her knuckles are sore and she's bruised to the bone. She's all used up and it's beginning to show. She can't go on like this.

So Katie gives up; the good fight, the pretend, all of it. She hangs up her gloves and exits the ring. She doesn't want the moral high ground anymore, she doesn't want to be right; she just wants someplace to rest her head.

Ridge is patient where he holds her arms and tries to read her face. God help her, she thinks she's falling in love with that patience.

Katie lets herself breathe again. "I think I need to go to the hospital. I don't feel so good."

Ridge doesn't question it. He draws her to his side, slipping a sure arm around her waist to support her. "All right, we'll go. Lean on me as much as you need to."

Katie is exhausted, Katie is wrong, Katie guilty as sin. But Katie leans on Ridge and step by step, she forgets to care. His hand on her hip gentles her splintered glass nerves where everyone's sudden, cloying concern makes them clatter and shriek against one another. The lie makes her knees feel weak and her cheeks go warm and hot. She looks the part she's playing, and the guilt feeds on itself till she can't quite stand.

When she expects a chair to sit on, his arms are there to catch her where she falters. "You're all right, I've got you."

And he does. He has her irretrievably. She can admit as much to herself.

The fact of the matter isn't that Katie's heart is fine—it is—it's that Katie's heart is better and it was Ridge Forrester that did it, the least likely heart healer of them all.


End file.
